


Embers

by AndyAO3



Series: somewhere (there's a place for us) [8]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Feels, Fluff, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Post-Coital Cuddling, a lot of other characters are brought up in conversation, implications of mcgenji? or implications of mchanzo?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:22:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8173015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: Well, they certainly didn't take long to get back together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The musical reference on this one is pretty obscure; "Embers" is a track by Max Richter that plays before Woodkid's "The Golden Age" during the video for the latter. The song "The Golden Age" has a refrain of "but the golden age is over", with the singer talking about how he couldn't believe all these impossible things but the golden age of these impossible things not coming to pass is _over_. Then it transitions into a bridge where the singer states, proudly, "we are family, no matter what they say"-- followed by the refrain, grim and somber. The golden age is over.
> 
> Ehh, whatever, I'm a nerd. These two are snarky assholes and I love writing them.

It was inevitable that, eventually, they would hit a breaking point. That at some point, they would come to a point of no return-- that the two magnets would stop circling each other, held so closely together that it became impossible to keep them from snapping back together again. It wasn't even something they had to arrange, just something that would happen. That was going to happen.

Reaper knew what it meant, when Jack bunkered down alone in one of their old safehouses. So easily trackable that it was laughable, if one knew Jack's patterns well enough. It was a blatant invitation, an opening, a chance for the wraith to take if he so chose.

Not even a few minutes after Reaper was in the door, they were on each other. Pleasantries were dispensed with quickly - as were clothes - and foreplay was a rushed affair that they barely bothered with. Any concerns about Talon and the new Overwatch were conveniently ignored; they had a day to themselves, and they were going to damn well use it.

Round one saw them both using their mouths, not even making it past the safehouse's rudimentary kitchen. As many new scars as they both had, they'd need time to map them properly, and neither of them was patient enough for that. Round two made it to the bed, just barely, as they worked a bit more creativity into proceedings. There was something comfortingly familiar about it all, for Reaper; some long-forgotten part of him that enjoyed seeing the great Jack Morrison reduced to putty in his hands, begging and needy. Something fascinating about how easy it was to leave marks on Jack's skin, purples and blues and reds and greens standing out all the more sharply under the safehouse's sickly fluorescent lighting.

After that they called a rain check on any further activities because they weren't in their twenties anymore and that meant that they were sleepy and satisfied enough to not want to bother with anything else just yet. Also, lazy (and in Jack's case, arthritic). Jack got a kick out of it when Reaper went to fetch one of the soldier's biotic field generators afterward, amused by the fussing; he reminded Jack as he climbed back into bed and put the thing down on the bedside table that only one of them had nanotech-induced superhealing as an innate thing.

(It had nothing to do with feeling bad for the bruises and hickeys, or how his eyes kept lingering on them. Absolutely nothing. He just didn't want to hear Jack complaining later. That's all. Really.)

"Could use that again instead of wasting my biotic emitters," Jack noted, propped up on his elbows. There was a wet patch on the sheets, and Jack was avoiding it.

How nice of him. "Rather not," the wraith drawled. "Unless you'd be willing to let me snack on your soul a bit to get me the boost I needed to make it work."

Jack's features crinkled in a grimace. "That's not really what it is, right?"

Reaper grinned and flopped back onto the bed next to the old man. Whatever, he could deal with a wet spot. At least it was a bed and not a rock-hard cot. "Probably not. But you have to admit that _eating souls_ sounds better than absorbing the potential energy of the cells in what remains of a corpse's still-living tissue."

"Do I want to know where you got that intel?"

"Talon's research. Sombra's been generous about sharing." A lot of it wasn't exactly the wraith's field of expertise, but that didn't mean he was completely out of the loop. Unlike Jack, he'd mostly understood whenever the science-types got to babbling back in the day. "And if you can manage to swing it, I'd appreciate it if your little band of cub scouts didn't go and mark her down as a target. Call it a favor."

Sighing, Jack snuggled up to rest his head against Reaper's shoulder as the warmth of the biotic field washed over him. From that angle, it was even easier to tell that the old soldier's hair was thinning; Reaper carded his fingers through it and felt the tension in the other man melt away as he did. "This mean I have competition?"

Reaper barked a laugh. "Hah. No."

"Good. Well, I mean. Not _good_ , but." Jack struggled for a second to find the right words, sinking into the bedding. Sulking like he always did when he got to thinking too much. "You know what I mean."

"That you're a codependent mess?" Reaper didn't bother to hide his grin as Jack twisted himself up to glare with clouded eyes. Well, no. _Pout_ was probably a better thing to call it. "Kidding."

Jack rolled his eyes and slumped back into position, taking a moment to flip the wraith off. "Asshole."

"You love it."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Part of the package, Jack."

"And it's a nice enough package, sure. Just, sometimes it seems like that package is caked in anthrax-laced horseshit for all the trouble you give me."

"I'm nice like that."

"Huh. Yeah, real generous." Jack scoffed. "D'you know how hard it was to try and explain what happened back in Numbani? There's no way to make 'my ex killed all the ambushers, ate their souls, and then kissed me back to full health with nanotech fuckery' sound right on a mission report."

"That would be because you never mastered the fine art of bullshitting. Besides, I'd say that 'my ex whom I'm supposed to be shooting on sight was in trouble so I killed our own goons to keep him from embarrassing himself further trying to fight them' sounds way worse."

"I wasn't embarrassing myself."

"There were only six of them, Jackie."

"I was out of rockets."

"Six. And they were goons. You could've taken them in your sleep." Particularly, the brainwashed kind of goons. Barely anything left, a lot like the situation Amelie was in. Amelie was at least a specialist, but those idiots? Painting the pavement with their brains had practically been a kindness. Reaper was just putting the poor bastards out of their misery at that point.

Jack put on the kind of pout that would have gotten him a free sympathy lunch when he was younger. "You're not going to let this one go, are you?"

"Nope. Never." The wraith put on a too-wide cheshire smile that showed a bit too much in the way of teeth. Payback for the wet spot. "You've officially turned into Old Man Morrison and I will never _not_ find that funny."

"Huh. You're as bad as the kids back at base." Jack slumped back into the pillows. "Did you know one of them is nineteen? Nineteen!"

"Jesse was younger."

"But Jesse had only been in a gang. This kid's a fucking soldier already, Gabe."

"Jesse was a soldier by the time he was nineteen."

"This girl isn't Jesse. She's a gamer for God's sake. Started out as one. She's not exactly the soldiering type to begin with."

"So she shaped up. Sometimes you have to shape up or you die."

"But she shouldn't _have_ to. Weren't we trying to make it so that these kids wouldn't need to pull this shit just to survive? So that desperate upper-crust armchair types wouldn't drag them into wars before they were old enough to fucking drink?"

Reaper sighed. It took a lot of energy to not just straight-up say that idealism of that sort had always been Jack's thing, not his; if he were to be honest with himself, he'd be forced to admit that he'd been fighting for the same things Jack had. And then he'd have to admit that they fucked up, because they hadn't been able to fix anything in the end. Back to square one, with the kids being the ones fighting because they were the ones who still had a stake in the world to come.

Since when had their conversation gotten so damned heavy?

"Jack." The old soldier was sulking, brooding. Probably thinking about the same things Reaper was. The wraith had a very human urge to snuggle closer and kiss him until he stopped pouting. "This isn't your fault, Jack."

"Yeah, it is." Annnnd yep, Jack was taking things personally again. "Gabriel, I look at these kids and I just think that maybe, maybe we could've prevented all this. You and me. If I'd just talked to you--"

"Don't start with that."

"I mean it, Gabe. I knew things were going wrong and I didn't tell you because Blackwatch was like family to you. Figured I could handle the complications on my end when they came up."

"And I didn't tell you about even a quarter of the shit that was wrong with Overwatch." Jack looked up, stricken. "What? You think I didn't know about the leaks in my own organization? C'mon, have a little more faith than that."

"So why didn't you tell me?"

"Honestly? Same as you. Figured I could handle it." The wraith closed his eyes, leaning back. The warmth of the biotic emitter was nice, but Jack's body heat was nicer. He'd missed it; the constant pseudo-fever from the nanotech maelstrom that kept him alive made him feel cold and shivery on his own. "The thing that gets me is the timeline. I can never pin down where it started to go tits-up on us."

"The promotion," Jack answered immediately.

But Reaper shook his head. "No, not that. Different kind of corruption involved in that one."

"Y'think so?"

"Definitely."

Jack frowned at nothing as he mulled it over. "Before then, y'think?"

"Maybe. Could go back as far as Omnica, but that's conspiracy theory territory, and the UN always hated that."

"No, that'd make a fucked up kind'a sense." Jack thought for a second, then snorted as something occurred to him. "Well, I know what Lindholm thinks."

Reaper quirked a brow. "Oh? What does the Ikea dwarf think?"

"--I'm going to tell him you called him that."

"Good. He'll get a kick out of it. Now what is it that he seems to think about this whole mess?"

"He thinks your Sombra wrote the god programs."

Reaper was thrown for a loop for a few seconds. "...Did he get dropped on his head since the last time I saw him?"

"Oh, good. So I'm not the only one who thinks that's crazy. Winston tried to tell me that it'd be remiss of us to not consider all possibilities."

"I'm not discrediting her, she probably knows more than she's told me about. Definitely knows more than she's told Talon. But-- _really_? He thinks she wrote the originals?"

"Yep. Thinks it's a conspiracy cover-up." Clearly, this was not an opinion that Jack shared. "He's just annoyed that someone keeps hacking his turrets and making them 'dance'."

That definitely sounded like a Sombra thing. "Question is, what are they dancing _to_?"

"Well, Athena narrowed it down based on the BPM of the, uh, dancing, but according to her it's fairly industry-standard as beats go. Six-eighths time."

"If I ask her and she tells me, I'll let you know so someone can make a video of it."

"Oxton would love that."

"She still making those short vids, that Day In The Life crap?"

"Yep. Got Shimada in on it too."

"Shimada!" Reaper found himself grinning at the name. Grumpy as the kid had been, he'd liked Shimada. Good sense of humor, got along well with the ingrate. "There's a name I haven't heard in a while. You really are getting the gang back together."

"Mm. Guess we are." Jack went quiet for a few seconds. "Look, there's-- there's room for more, if you want to come back. The old bases are pretty quiet. Pretty empty."

"Jack."

"I'm serious, here. To hell with what the others think." The soldier twisted himself up again, eventually shifting and moving himself to straddle Reaper's lap. Eye to eye. Naked, too. The wraith raised an eyebrow and let his hands settle on Jack's hips, stroking pale skin with his thumbs. The bruises were mostly gone thanks to the biotic emitter; the thought of pouncing on Jack just to make some new ones was a tempting one. "To hell with Talon."

Reaper winced. Couldn't meet Jack's eyes, which he knew had to be trained on him even though he'd still be mostly a blur, even up close. "I can't. Not yet."

"Like hell you can't," Jack shot back. Then, a little softer, "why can't you?"

"Because I can take the heat from Talon that others can't," the wraith replied.

"That is the most back-asswards thing I've ever heard out of you."

Maybe. But like a lot of things, it made sense in his head long before it ever made sense in anyone else's. "I'm sorry, Jack," he said instead, finally looking up. Seeing Jack's angry little pout, having to fight the urge to laugh. Even after thirty years, some things didn't change.

He felt more like himself than he had in a long goddamn time. Almost like he was human again.

"If it helps, I could never say 'no' to you for long," Reaper-- no, _Gabriel_ said. "I'll probably come around."

Jack let go of a long, irritated sigh and buried his face in Gabriel's neck. "Goddamn it, Gabe. It's not about what I want."

"Yes it is," the wraith deadpanned.

"No, it's not-- ghh, it's about Talon using you."

"Overwatch, Talon. Both would use me. At least the latter doesn't treat me like a pariah, or a lab rat." He rolled his eyes when the soldier jerked back to give him a horrified look. "Oh, don't give me that. They'd justify the hell out of it, but they'd still do it. Talon wouldn't dare to piss me off."

"And Overwatch would?"

"Overwatch not only would, but then it'd expect me to sit still and shut up about it when it did. Then if I said anything, I'd be the bad guy in the way of progress."

Jack frowned deeply. "It's not like that anymore." Then, "I wouldn't let them do that to you."

No, Jack wouldn't be able to do anything about it. He was still one of the good guys, and the good guys made compromises for the sake of keeping the peace. That was how things worked. And even if Jack _did_ try to stop the new Overwatch from turning into the old, all that lovely moral fiber wouldn't mean shit when those kids got their asses handed to them on a platter by the world at large. They'd just be dead, or hurt, and there'd be no one to blame for it but the people who told them they had to be good.

Besides, it wasn't like Gabriel was exempt; when it came down to it, he knew he'd end up following Jack eventually. Talon could only work around him for so long. They'd discard him once he'd outlived his usefulness. That was just a straight-up fact.

Gabriel sighed, smoothing his hands over Jack's outer thighs. "I'm still coming back at some point, Jack," he said. "Even if we were still at each others' throats--"

"In a way, we kind of _are_..."

"--even if that were the case, Talon's going to be done with me eventually. I'm not like Amelie. I'm a liability as much as I'm an asset." In some ways, it'd been the same with Overwatch. "And when I'm gone, there's nothing to come between Talon and the people in it who aren't shitheads. Your new Overwatch is just paranoid enough to make for decent protection."

"Not that paranoid."

"My intel says otherwise. You've got a lot of former Blackwatch and newer Blackwatch-Lite agents running ops right now, Jack, but not a one of those ops is anything resembling what you would've had us do. It's all a little bit too squeaky-clean if you ask me, so either you're not running Blackwatch ops at all or you're running them so far under the radar that my sources can't see them."

The way Jack averted his eyes and frowned spoke volumes; Gabriel could feel the tension in him, could see it in the muscles along his shoulders and neck and jaw. Jack had always been so easy to read. "What's your point, Gabe?"

"That your people are way more willing to buy into a redemption arc right now than they are to be okay with blatant assholes, and that works in my favor when I'm trying to find a place to shuffle people to that's safe from Talon." Even if redemption wasn't possible - or necessary. Even if it was a dumbass thing to shoot for. Even if his people would have a hell of a time sucking up to warm fuzzy good guys with martyr complexes. Still better than being dead.

Jack winced like he knew Gabriel was right. "Jesus. You make it sound like you'd have to grovel to get in."

"The official story says I'm a traitor, Jack."

"Who gives a shit about the official story?"

"Your people do." There, that flinch again. Jack knew it too. "But it's not about me."

The soldier sighed irritably and leaned forward to press his forehead against Gabriel's neck; Gabriel could feel the shift in the muscles of his brow when he frowned, and his breath was warm, shaky against the wraith's skin. "What's the point, then?"

Gabriel went silent for a moment. "That nineteen year old," he began. "What's her name?"

"Hana," Jack mumbled.

"Sounds like a sweet kid," Gabriel said.

"Pain in the ass, actually."

Most young people were. "If it were her," Gabriel mused, "what would you be willing to do to keep her safe?"

Jack had to think on that. "A lot more than she'd appreciate," he answered eventually. "Not just her. Oxton, Correia, Shimada, Zhou, Ziegler. Fareeha. Hell, even Jesse."

"Could you leave them behind?" Gabriel asked.

"No." A lot less hesitation there.

"If there was a chance they'd be safe, would you take it?"

"I'd take it."

"Then there's your answer. If I have to - _when_ I have to - I'll come back." He lifted his hands to stroke Jack's broad back, his hair, his neck. Soothing, calming. Jack needed to know that he wasn't going to be the potential cause of Gabriel's imminent misery or it'd eat him alive. Even if the only reason Gabriel was willing to consider Overwatch at all was because Jack was there to make it more bearable, whether by bullying the rest of the fledgling organization into listening or by just being there. Either worked.

Part of him wanted to be angry that he'd fallen into the old pattern of trusting Morrison so easily, but the rest of him was content to ignore that part so long as Jack was still a warm, solid weight in his arms. He could let himself think for a second that Jack cared, give himself a chance to relax for the first time in years-- for once he'd said _I told you so_ , and someone had replied with _you did, and you were right_. That meant something, didn't it?

"How's Jesse doing?" he asked.

Jack chuckled at the question, kissed his neck as if to appease him. "Fine. Got a bounty on his head. Seems like he's getting friendly with Shimada."

"Which Shimada? You've got two now."

"Haven't been paying attention."

"Somehow I'm not surprised."

"Hey, Gabe?"

"Mm?"

"Te amo."

Gabriel snorted and ruffled Jack's thinning hair.

　

 


End file.
